The recently concluded Ekiti State gubernatorial election was, once again, accompanied by familiar allegations of vote buying. Political parties hurled accusations at one another, citizens traded stories of cash inducements, food packages, and the now routine monetisation of civic participation. For many Nigerians, these allegations no longer even provoke outrage.
Vote buying has become such a predictable feature of elections that its presence scarcely surprises anyone anymore. Every election cycle follows a familiar script: political actors deny wrongdoing, observers condemn the practice, electoral bodies promise investigations, and then the country collectively moves on until the next election arrives with the exact same problem.
Interestingly, conversations about vote buying often focus on the transaction itself rather than the conditions that make such transactions possible. The money exchanged at polling units is merely the final act in a much longer story. To understand why Nigerians continue to sell their votes, one must first understand the history of power in Nigeria and the role poverty plays within it.
The uncomfortable truth is that Nigerian politics has always been an elite enterprise.
Long before independence, political participation was largely the preserve of a small class of educated and economically privileged Nigerians who possessed the resources, literacy, and social standing necessary to challenge colonial authority. These individuals occupied a unique socioeconomic position. They were wealthy enough to avoid total dependence on colonial structures, yet educated enough to engage the British on legal, constitutional, and intellectual grounds.
It was this class that spearheaded Nigeria’s nationalist movement. Figures such as Herbert Macaulay, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Obafemi Awolowo formed political organisations, mobilised support, published newspapers, and negotiated constitutional arrangements that eventually culminated in Nigeria gaining independence on October 1st, 1960.
Macaulay established the Nigerian National Democratic Party in 1923. Azikiwe transformed the West African Pilot into a formidable anti-colonial platform and later helped found the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons. Awolowo built the Action Group into one of the most influential political organisations in the country.
Through journalism, political mobilisation, and constitutional negotiations, these men successfully wrestled sovereignty from British hands. But sovereignty did not immediately translate into popular political ownership. The transfer of power from colonial administrators to Nigerians was, in many respects, a transfer from one elite class to another. The race of those in power changed, but the structures largely remained.
The post-colonial state inherited institutions designed primarily for extraction rather than development. Colonial governance had never been intended to improve the welfare of Nigerians; its purpose was to facilitate economic exploitation. Rather than dismantle those structures, many post-independence leaders simply occupied them.
The Niger Delta provides perhaps the clearest example. Decades after independence, the region that generates much of Nigeria’s wealth remains plagued by environmental degradation, underdevelopment, and poverty. Resource extraction and wealth accumulation continued, while the people most affected by the process remained largely excluded from its benefits.
Corruption, too, proved remarkably durable. Even some of Nigeria’s most celebrated democratic figures were not immune from allegations of financial impropriety. Both Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe faced investigations and official scrutiny during their political careers. If the icons of Nigeria’s democratic tradition were not entirely insulated from these dynamics, it becomes easier to understand why contemporary political parties continue to struggle with them.
Over time, elite dominance became one of the defining characteristics of Nigerian governance.
In many ways, the average Nigerian today relates to political power much as their colonial predecessors related to colonial administrators: as something distant, unresponsive, and fundamentally disconnected from their everyday reality. This alienation helps explain why electoral malpractice has remained so persistent – the masses are not at the heart of governance, the gratification of the political class is.
The 2007 general elections are still widely regarded as among the worst in Nigeria’s history. Ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, falsified results, and widespread irregularities were reported across the country. Although reforms such as biometric voter registration and BVAS were later introduced, elite actors simply adapted to new circumstances.
The controversies surrounding the 2023 general elections demonstrated that despite technological improvements, public confidence in electoral outcomes remains fragile. Court challenges, allegations of manipulation, and widespread dissatisfaction underscored the extent to which many Nigerians still view elections with suspicion.
This erosion of trust creates fertile ground for vote buying. After all, why protect the sanctity of your vote if you do not believe your vote matters? Why reject immediate financial relief in favour of a democratic promise that has repeatedly failed to materialise?
Afrobarometer surveys conducted across thirty-six African countries between 2021 and 2022 reveal a troubling trend. Fewer than four in ten citizens believe democracy is delivering on its promises. Only forty four percent believe elections can effectively remove unresponsive leaders. Across several countries, support for democratic processes has steadily declined.
Nigeria is not immune to this crisis of faith. For many citizens, elections no longer represent opportunities for transformation. They represent temporary moments of economic opportunity. And that reality cannot be separated from poverty.
Nearly seventy years after independence, Nigeria remains one of the poorest countries in the world despite possessing immense natural and human resources. Approximately 140 million Nigerians live below the national poverty line. Inflation has devastated purchasing power, essential services remain unreliable or inaccessible, unemployment remains high, public education struggles and healthcare remains inadequate.
For millions of Nigerians, daily survival is an all-consuming project. The woman selling roasted corn by the roadside is worried about feeding her family. The butcher in the market is worried about rising food prices. The hawker navigating traffic under the scorching sun is worried about making enough money to get through the week.
In such circumstances, asking citizens to carefully study party manifestos and long-term policy proposals can sound almost absurd. The future is difficult to prioritise when the present feels unbearable. This is precisely what Nigerians have come to call “stomach infrastructure.”
The phrase entered popular political vocabulary during the 2014 Ekiti gubernatorial election when Ayodele Fayose successfully mobilised support through extensive distribution of food and material assistance, defeating incumbent governor Kayode Fayemi. Since then, “stomach infrastructure” has become shorthand for a particular style of political engagement: one in which politicians provide immediate material benefits rather than long-term developmental outcomes.
What makes this phenomenon particularly disturbing is that it has transformed poverty into a political resource. The poorer citizens become, the more valuable small inducements become. The more valuable those inducements become, the easier it becomes for political actors to purchase electoral loyalty. Poverty ceases to be merely a socioeconomic problem and becomes a mechanism of political control.
This is the weaponisation of poverty.
It extends beyond election-day cash transfers. It manifests in educational systems that fail to produce informed citizens. It appears in welfare programmes structured around dependency rather than empowerment. It thrives in regional inequalities where development projects are selectively distributed according to political calculations rather than public need.
Nigeria’s vast wealth exists alongside profound deprivation not because solutions are unavailable, but because deprivation itself often serves useful political functions. An economically vulnerable population is easier to manipulate, an undereducated population is easier to misinform, and a population struggling for survival has little time left to organise for accountability.
The result is a deeply unsettling democratic paradox. Nigerians possess political power. Elections cannot occur without them and politicians still require their votes. Yet, that political power exists within conditions that severely constrain meaningful choice.
When a voter exchanges a ballot for food or money, it is tempting to interpret the act as a failure of civic responsibility. But that ignores the realities that produced the transaction in the first place. The voter is making a choice. The problem is that the choice exists within a system designed to limit alternatives.
This is why vote buying remains such a difficult issue to solve. It is not merely a legal or electoral problem, but the political expression of a much deeper economic reality. Sections 121 and 122 of the Electoral Act criminalise vote buying and vote selling, but enforcement alone cannot address the conditions that make both practices attractive. Until poverty itself is confronted, vote buying will remain a rational survival strategy for many Nigerians.
And so Nigeria finds itself trapped in a peculiar democratic arrangement.
The masses continue to choose their leaders, politicians continue to seek popular legitimacy, elections continue to occur at regular intervals, but these democratic rituals exist within a system in which economic desperation routinely shapes political outcomes.
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